Topeka  Gov. Sam Brownback on Tuesday told a three-judge panel to throw out all the state House and Senate redistricting plans that have been considered by the Legislature.

In a friend of the court brief, Brownback’s chief counsel Caleb Stegall said the legislative maps varied too greatly in population from ideal size districts.

“While this court has in front of it many plans considered at some point in the political process by the Kansas Legislature, none of those plans comes close to the stringent standard of equality required by the Constitution for court ordered plans,” Stegall argued. “Therefore, this court must eschew the easy route of simply approving one or the other of these plans.”

Brownback’s position was given to the federal panel that is hearing testimony in Kansas’ redistricting impasse.

The Legislature and Brownback failed to come to an agreement on redrawing political boundaries for congressional, legislative and State Board of Education districts during the 2012 session that ended earlier this month.

The matter is now before three federal judges: Kathryn Vratil, John Lungstrum and Mary Beck Briscoe, who is chief of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A two-day hearing started Tuesday.

Every 10 years, legislators are charged with re-drawing district lines to account for changes and shifts in population. But political warfare erupted between conservative Republicans and a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats, with each side accusing the other of trying to gain the upper hand in getting their candidates elected.

Brownback, who is a conservative Republican, says he has a special interest in the case because he is “the state officer who would have been required to either approve or veto any reapportionment plan that successfully passed both the Kansas Senate and the Kansas House.”

To ensure that people are represented equally, courts demand that districts be as equal in size as possible.

The ideal size for a state Senate district is 70,896, and the ideal size for a state House district is 22,716.

Stegall said all the proposals considered by the Legislature had deviations from those populations ranging from 5.2 percent to 9.96 percent.

He said courts have allowed some leeway in districts drawn through the political process, but when courts draw the maps, those deviations are reduced to no more than two percent.

“In light of precedent set forth above, none of the state reapportionment plans considered by the Kansas Legislature satisfy the constitutional standards for equality that must be present in any court ordered plan. As such, this court must reject them all,” he said.

Stegall said there was one state Senate plan below two percent deviation that was on the Kansas legislative website but was never voted upon. That map was drawn up by a conservative legislator. Stegall didn’t endorse that plan but brought it to the panel’s attention.

Comments

What the Governor is saying is that rural Kansas needs to lose seats, as that's what the effect of his "suggestion" to the court would be.

And how nice of the Governor - who pledged that he wasn't going to endorse maps - to bring to the judges' attention a map drawn by one of his conservative friends. You know, just to point it out to them, not endorse it, but just mention it, without supporting it, of course.

Just like he never endorsed a map during the session...he just had his staff draw them up (with software from the Kansas Chamber, funneled through a front group) so he could show those maps to legislators. You know, just to show them, not to endorse them, but really more as a public service because he's just such a nice guy.
http://cjonline.com/news/2012-05-26/politicians-play-hardball-map-fracas

Anti-Brownback good gosh man lighten up. If you read the article you see that the population deviances were greater than permissible on all plans except the one he "noted." He also notes that court plans are closer to 2% deviation from optimal.
Cut the guy a break. If "rural" Kansas loses seats maybe, just maybe, it's because rural Kansas is losing population AND the redistricting is supposed to reflect where the population actually lives.

Brownback has proven to be the most insincere governor Kansas has ever had. There is no way whatsoever to keep Sam from dancing around in the spotlight while spouting off lie after lie. I've never seen anyone so eaten up with deceit. I think he actually believes if he can get his name in the national news a certain number of times during the next three years that he would be a shoo in for President in four years. I could almost pity the guy if he had not been doing his best to tear Kansas apart.

He was clear about his intentions when he ran for election. He was elected to institute his ideas into how the state should be run. He has done nothing that would call for a waste of resources into some sham investigation merely because you disagree with him politically.

Brownback made no secrets of his intentions. His claims of protecting education and social services were clearly lies, and anyone with half a brain realized that you could not cut taxes and cut spending the way Brownback wanted without harming education and social services.

Most people who voted for Brownback were either too ignorant to realize these lies or actually wanted to see these things cut.

Elections matter, and Kansas chose Brownback as their governor.

It is my opinion that these tax cuts wil bankruupt the state, leading to massive cuts to education, social services, and maybe even roads and transportation.

Kansas will be living with these decisions for decades if not for the foreseeable future.

If the KS Legislature is so partisan and messed up that it can't do redistricting without judicial help them maybe we should just disband it and let any set of 3 random people decide everything. Faster, quicker and cheaper than what we have now. We could have a qualifying exam and only people with IQ's of 70 would be put in a pool and their names drawn and they would serve for 1 term. There you go everything is solved.